The story begins when Kinsey, against her better judgment, accepts an assignment from crusty interior designer Fiona Purcell. Fiona's ex-husband, prominent Santa Theresa physician Dowan Purcell, has been missing for several weeks. Chief administrator for a nursing home called Pacific Meadows, Purcell left work at the usual time one Friday night and has not been heard from since. Local police have made little or no progress in tracing him, and Kinsey finds herself following in their footsteps, futilely attempting to make sense of an elusive, increasingly remote event.

Kinsey's investigation takes her beneath the placid surface of a respected doctor's life, revealing an unexpectedly problematic underside. The Dowan Purcell who gradually emerges is a secret drinker with a propensity for kinky sex. His second marriage -- to former stripper Crystal Muscoe -- has a carefully concealed dark side that manifests itself in the rebellious behavior of his troubled teenage stepdaughter, Leila. Purcell's professional life proves equally problematic: Pacific Meadows is currently being investigated for numerous counts of Medicare fraud. Picking her way slowly through this lethal combination of elements, Kinsey searches, with typical persistence, for the key to Dowan Purcell's disappearance.

I really enjoy the Kinsey Milhone mysteries, especially on audio book. I have a long commute every week day (50 minutes - morning & evening) and listening to an audio book really makes the drive enjoyable. The mysteries aren't earthshaking, more of a garden variety-type, but they really capture your interest. Sometimes I find myself driving around my home block several times just to keep listening when we reach a crucial point in the story. Even if you've read the books, try listening for a change, it really helps to visualize the characters and the locale. I would recommend any of the Alphabet Mysteries!

"Kinsey Millhone never sees it coming. S is mired in the case of a doctor who disappeared, his angry ex-wife, and beautiful current one--a case that is full of unfinished business, unfinished homes, and people drifting in and out of their own lives. Then Kinsey gets a shock. A man she finds attractive is hiding a fatal secret--and now a whole lot of beauty, money and lies are proving to be a fatal distraction from what Kinsey should have seen all along; a killer standing right before her eyes..."

Another great installment of the wise-cracking PI. Kinsey. You absolutely have to love a woman who knows how to get by with one basic black dress, make you laugh, and catch the bad guys. Yummy reading. Perfect for summer or anytime.

SYNOPSIS
Dr. Dowan Purcell had been missing for nine weeks when Kinsey got a call asking her to take on the case. A specialist in geriatric medicine, Purcell was a prominent member of the Santa Theresa medical community, and the police had done a thorough job. Purcell had no known enemies and seemed content with his life. At the time of his disappearance, he was running a nursing care facility where both the staff and the patients loved him. He adored his second wife, Crystal, and doted on their two-year-old son.
It wasn't Crystal who called Kinsey. It was Purcell's ex-wife, Fiona. Everything about their meeting made Kinsey uneasy. Fiona's manner was high-handed and her expectations unrealistic. Kinsey's instincts told her to refuse the job, yet she ended up saying, "I'll do what I can, but I make no promises."

Kinsey Millhone is investigating the case of a missing docotr, his angry ex-wife and the beautiful current wife. Grafton is able to come up with new ideas for this format. You want to keep reading to the conclusion of the case.

P is for Peril is the another of Sue Grafton's quests to cover the entire alphabet with Kinsey Millhone mysteries. It's a very good mystery, but G is for Gumshoe still has to be my favorite!

P is for Peril has Kinsey hired by a bitter ex-wife to try to find a missing doctor. Dr. Dowan Purcell disappeared leaving many unanswered questions and speculation of fraudulent Medicare claims at the nursing home he runs. There seem to be many questions and no answers, so it's Kinsey's job to try to find him and get those answers.

Seems like a simple cookie-cutter type mystery plot, right? Not on your life! Throw in the current wife, a former stripper, with a teenage daughter whose sole purpose in life is to annoy adults and despise any and all authority. This current wife, Crystal, is rumored to be having an affair with her personal trainer. Then there's Crystal's ex-husband who still believes she's coming back to him.

When Kinsey finds the good doctor's body, murder and not suicide is the outcome and these characters each have their own motives for wanting him dead. Even though she's off the case, Kinsey can't let it go and digs even deeper to find the identity of the killer

Good book by Sue Grafton, although I was a little disappointed at the ending. There are two different story lines going on throughout the book; neither are related. The ending is a surprise, and the story ends abruptly; all in all, still a good Kinsey Millhone story.

From Booklist
Kinsey Millhone, she of the \"slightly dinged\" \'74 VW Bug, the portable Smith Corona, and the peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches, is back, and she\'s landed in a mystery that\'s as good as two, moving from the laconic private-eye story at which Grafton excels to a bated-breath thriller. Millhone, short on cash, is ambivalent about taking on a missing-persons case involving a rich doctor who may have repeated history by running out on his new wife and infant son. The case becomes riveting to Millhone, however, when she learns that the good doctor is sought after by federal fraud busters on suspicion of medicare fraud. With this story chugging along on procedure, matters take a sick plunge when Millhone discovers that the brothers who are her new landlords (one of whom she\'s become romantically involved with) murdered their parents 10 years previously. Her effort to escape that relationship is overridden by her need, financial and psychological, to investigate what happened to the family jewels, at the urging of an insurance company. As always, Grafton gives us a truly complex heroine, marvelous depictions of Southern California architecture and interiors, and a writing style that can make a weed path interesting (for example, snails are seen as moving on the sidewalk \"with the optimism of the innocent\").

Great book. I really enjoyed the characters in this novel. I'm really loving this series, even though I'm not reading it in the correct order from A-Z, it's good enough that you don't need to read it in order.

In her latest adventure, Kinsey Millhone enters the world of noir. A shadowland in which the mysterious disappearance of a prominent physician leads Kinsey into a danger-filled maze of duplicity and double-dealing... It is now nine weeks since Dr Dowan Purcell vanished without trace. The sixtynine-year-old doctor had said goodnight to his colleagues at the Pacific Meadows nursing home, had climbed into his car and driven away - never to be seen again. His embittered first wife Fiona is convinced he is still alive. His second wife, Crystal - a former stripper forty years his junior - is just as sure he is dead. Enter private investigator Kinsey Malone, hired by Fiona to find out just what has happened to the man they loved. Enter also Tommy Hevener, an attractive flame-haired twenty-something who has set his romantic sights on Kinsey. And Tommy is a man with a very interesting past

She's Kinsey Millhone, familiar to millions of readers around the globe, and she's back in full stride in P is for Peril, her latest venture into the darker side of the human soul. Mordant, mocking, and deceptively low-key, hers is a voice we know we can trust, from a character we've come to love.

Through fifteen novels, Sue Grafton has gone from strength to strength, never writing the same book twice. So it's no surprise that she has taken on new territory in her sixteenth, this time entering the world of noir. It's a world cast in shades of black amid shafts of steel and silver, a shadow land in which the mysterious disappearance of a prominent physician leads Kinsey into a danger-filled maze of duplicity and double-dealing as she taps into the intricacies of a cunning Medicare fraud.

P is for Peril: the novel in which Millhone stakes her life on a thin thread of intuition because the facts glint elusively out of reach and only guesses offer any shot at the truth.

"Unlike many detective series, Grafton's seems only to get better each time out," wrote Entertainment Weekly, and P is for Peril is a case in point. Pushing herself, reaching further with each new book, Sue Grafton delivers every time.

Another book in the Kinsey Millhone series. She is doing her usual sleuthing, involving a doctor who has disappeared, his angry ex-wife and his beautiful new one. Ms. Grafton does a great job in keeping her stories individual and always interesting. I really enjoyed this one!

When Dowan Purcell, a respected physician who operates a nursing home, disappears, his ex-wife hires Santa Teresa PI Kinsey Millhone to look into it. Fiona Purcell is still seething over Dow's affair and subsequent marriage to Crystal, a former stripper, yet they're still friends, and she seems worried. But when his body is discovered, she's among the suspects. Both of Dow's wives, at least one of his business partners, and perhaps even Crystal's teenage daughter had motives to kill.

While in her most recent adventures (N Is for Noose, O Is for Outlaw) Kinsey has acquired new digs, an extended family, and a few more gray hairs, in this one (which takes place some time in the mid-'80s), she's 36, still living in the remodeled garage that was blown up in an earlier novel. Easier than a facelift, and while Sue Grafton is a solid enough writer to pull it off, dedicated Kinsey fans will miss the more complex and multidimensional character who aged so ruefully and interestingly in the '90s. This isn't Grafton's strongest case; it's hard to care about any of Purcell's women or his associates. More exciting is the secondary plot, which involves a handsome landlord who offers Kinsey the new office space she's been seeking and turns out to be a lot more trouble than she bargained for. Despite its somewhat plodding pace and the echo of a more evolved heroine that rings through its pages, Grafton's many fans will probably shoot P Is for Peril right to the top of the bestseller list.

Dr. Dowan Purcell had been missing for nine weeks when Kinsey got a call asking her to take on the case. A specialist in geriatric medicine, Purcell was a prominent member of the Santa Teresa medical community, and the police had done a thorough job. Purcell had no known enemies and seemed contented with his life. At the time of his disappearance, he was running a nursing care facility where both the staff and the patients loved him. He adored his second wife, Crystal, and doted on their two-year-old son.

It wasn't Crystal who called Kinsey. It was Purcell's ex-wife, Fiona. Everything about their meeting made Kinsey uneasy. Fiona's manner was high-handed and her expectations unrealistic. Kinsey's instincts told her to refuse the job, yet she ended up saying, "I'll do what I can, but I make no promises."

It was a decision she'd live to regret.

Pursuing the mysterious disappearance of Purcell, Kinsey crashes into a wall of speculation. It seems everyone has a theory. The cops think he went on a bender and is too ashamed to come home. Fiona is sure he ran off to get away from Crystal, and Crystal is just as sure he's dead. The staff at the nursing home is convinced he's been kidnapped, and one of his daughters, having consulted a psychic, is certain that he's trapped in a dark place, though she doesn't know where. Kinsey is awash in explanations and sorely lacking in facts. Then pure chance leads her in another direction, and she soon finds herself in a dangerous shadow land, where duplicity and double-dealing are the reality and, with the truth glinting elusively out of reach, she must stake her life on a thin tread of intuition.

"P" is for Peril: Kinsey Millhone's latest venture into the darker side of the human soul.

Kinsey Millhone never sees it coming. She is mired in the case of a doctor who disappeared, his angry ex-wife, and beautiful current one-a case that is full of unfinished buisness, unfinished homes, and people drifting in and out of their own lives.

Kinsey Millhone never sees it coming. She is mired in the case of a doctor who disappeared, his angry ex-wife, and beautiful current one---a case that is full of unfinished business, unfinished homes, and people drifting in and out of their own lives. Then Kinsey gets a shock. A man she finds attractive is hiding a fatal secret---and now a whole lot of beauty, money, and lies are proving to be a fatal distraction from what Kinsey should have seen all along: a killer standing right before her eyes...

Kinsey Millhone never sees it coming. She is mired in the case of a doctor who disappeared, his angry ex-wife, and beautiful current one - a case that is full of unfinished business, unfinished homes, and people drifting in and out of their own lives. Then Kinsey gets a shock. A man she finds attractive is hiding a fatal secret - and now a whole lot of beauty, money, and lies are proving to be a tatal distraction from what Kinsey should have seen all along: a killer standing right before her eyes...

Amazon.com
When Dowan Purcell, a respected physician who operates a nursing home, disappears, his ex-wife hires Santa Teresa PI Kinsey Millhone to look into it. Fiona Purcell is still seething over Dow's affair and subsequent marriage to Crystal, a former stripper, yet they're still friends, and she seems worried. But when his body is discovered, she's among the suspects. Both of Dow's wives, at least one of his business partners, and perhaps even Crystal's teenage daughter had motives to kill.

Dr. Dowan Purcell had been missing for nine weeks when Kinsey got a call asking her to take on the case. A specialist in geriatric medicine, Purcell was a prominent member of the Santa Teresa medical community, and the police had done a thorough job. Purcell had no known enemies and seemed contented with his life. At the time of his disappearance, he was running a nursing care facility where both the staff and the patients loved him. He adored his second wife, Crystal, and doted on their two-year-ole son. It wasn't Crystal who called Kinsey. It was Purcell's ex-wife, Fiona. Everything about their meeting made Kinsey uneasy, Fiona's manner was high-handed and her expectations unrealistic. Kinsey's instincts told her to refuse the job, yet she ended up saying, "I'll do what I can, but I make no promises." It was a decision she'd live to regret.

Dr. Dowan Purcell had been missing for nine weeks when Kinsey got a call asking her to take on the case. A specialist in geriatric medicine, Purcell was a prominent member of the Santa Teresa medical community, and the police had done a thorough job. Purcell had no known enemies and seemed contented with his life. At the time of his disappearance, he was running a nursing care facility where both the staff and patients loved him. He adored his second wife, Crystal, and doted on their two-year-old son. It wasn't Crystal who called Kinsey. It was Purcell's ex-wife, Fiona. Kinsey's instincts told her to refuse the job, yet she ended up saying, "i"ll do what I can, but I make no promises." It was a decision she'd live to regret.